


When You're Broken on the Ground

by Katherine



Category: The Lion King (1994)
Genre: Diverges from canon, F/M, Mufasa survives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:47:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23986303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/pseuds/Katherine
Summary: He came to consciousness slowly, in fits and starts, while a new day's sunrise was peeking over a vaguely-familiar, too flat horizon.
Relationships: Mufasa/Shenzi (The Lion King)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	When You're Broken on the Ground

Mufasa had never been so exhausted. He came to consciousness slowly, in fits and starts, while a new day's sunrise was peeking over a vaguely-familiar, too flat horizon. He was somewhere on the borders, much further from Pride Rock than he should be. Feeling battered all over, as if he'd fallen under countless stampeding hooves, then been tossed off a cliff, and finally been left alone to die. From the terrible flashes he remembered, all that was true. His paws hurt; he realised that he must have got himself out of the gorge, half conscious. Or rather less than half, since he could not remember the journey.

A carrion-eater bird, buzzard or vulture, landed and hopped nearer, a hunched grey shape at the edge of Mufasa's sight. When it heaved itself back into the sky, Mufasa was startled. He had barely moved, not enough to scare one of those that continued the Circle with tearing beaks.

Some other animal had. Approaching was another grey shape, this one four legged... There was a snarl, the sound too familiar from his years of border patrol and running off poachers, not to mention Simba's recent adventure in the Elephant Graveyard. A hyena. One who Mufasa recognised. Shenzi was snarling, lips drawn back from her teeth.

"Shenzi." His voice rasped as if he had used it up in screaming; perhaps he had, at the gorge, frightened in ways he did not want to remember. "Come to feast..." He could hardly pull himself up to his paws let alone fight. "Leading your clan to feast on a king."

Shenzi's snarl changing to a laugh, fading in the dusty morning air, was chilling.

"You who _were_ a king, Mufasa," she said, hissing his name. "As I led a clan. Nothing but coups around here lately."

*

Mufasa joked, feebly, about her nursing him back to strength. _"Nursing_ nothing," Shenzi said, but when she brought meat, carrion that he would have rejected in more exalted days, she allowed him to eat of it. Not the king's first portion that he had been entitled to from his pride, but some.

He did not know where they were. Outside of the Pride Lands, scratching existence in a place not quite desert but little richer. More than half unthinking, that first pain-blurred morning, he had followed her talk of hiding places, dragging himself as soon as he could move. Wishing with every paw-step he was strong enough to return to his lands. He was too weakened to avoid the impatient snap of teeth that could break bone. Shenzi didn't aim at him, but the sharp sound kept him moving.

He had no news of the kingdom. Zazu must be imprisoned, or dead and eaten; Mufasa had not once seen the familiar silhouette in the sky.

*

In dry, over-hunted lands, his pride would be closer to starving with every turn of the moon. Mufasa was thin himself, kept alive by a hyena's help, but in no state to challenge his usurper.

He was weak, and he was lonely. When Shenzi put herself against his side, sharing warmth they both needed, he leaned towards her instead of away. When she touched him with strange blunt-clawed paws and long smooth tongue, he closed his mind to the memory of Sarabi, and let himself be roused. He was dead to his wife, to all the pride.

Perhaps even when he had regained strength, if he ever did, he should not return to the Pride Lands. No longer a husband or a king, he shared unnatural pleasure with a hyena who was no longer an enemy. Her musk clung to his fur.


End file.
